Seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. Once more, it appears that a what had originally been hyped as LIQUID TERROR IN THE SKIES! may not have been quite as big a deal as we originally thought. Certainly not as imminent as we were told by the White House. Quoting former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray (courtesy Andrew Sullivan):
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth …
We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why?
Let me repeat what Ambassador Murray just highlighted for us. No bombs. No airline tickets purchased. No passports even for many of these “suiciders.” Explain to me, again, what was so urgent about this threat that we had to shut down trans-atlantic flights and make everyone hand over their water bottles and hand cream before being allowed to board their domestic flights in the US of A?
Oh! I forgot. Joe Lieberman had a primary election against a mean old commie anti-war rich elite dirty hippy named Ned Lamont! Doh!
The shame of it is, that, yes Virginia, there are terrorists out there. After all, we’re making more of them every day across the Islamic World.
And one day, we’ll be hit again, not by one of these Not ready for Prime Time Amateur Night productions that Bush and Blair keep hyping every election cycle (or whenever their poll numbers are in the dumper), but by a real Broadway Smash Hit production with all the bells and whistles. And real people will die, again, just as real people are dying today in Iraq and Afghanistan and god knows where else.
And we will then be told by our screaming pudgy faced Cable TV pundits and their guest commentators, the usual neoconservative suspects, that such a heinous crime means we must elect Republicans as our Senators, Congresscritters and especially to the office of El Presidente, because only they understand how to get tough with the terrists. Only they have the guts to take the fight to the enemy over there. Only they.
And after enough people repeat this now “conventional wisdom” endlessly, on radio and TV and in the “liberal media” (including its bastions, the NY Times and Washington Post), I fear too many of my fellow Americans will drink the fucking koolaid once again, and go off chanting the slogan “Remember [Insert New Terror Attack Date Here]! as they head to the polls.
Those who are allowed to vote, that is.
God help me, but that’s how I really feel right now.
